Saturday, May 7, 2016

Gallery After Hours at National Gallery Singapore

It's our first visit to the National Gallery Singaporeafter its official opening late last year. The new visual arts institution is housed in two national monuments - former Supreme Court and City Hall - that have been beautifully restored and transformed. The Gallery now oversees the largest public collection of modern art in Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Last Friday, National Gallery Singapore held their very first Gallery After Hoursevent with a line-up of after-hours programmes including, live music, specialty food & drinks and complementary entries to all galleries, including the special exhibition 'Reframing Modernism'. (*admission fees applies on other days)

I could not recall when was the last time we stepped into an Art Gallery but we reminded the children to be really cautious with the expensive paintings! No touching of the exhibit, always step behind the black line and no flash photography. ^_^

Located at level 3, Reframing Modernism exhibition spreads across 3 galleries, allowing visitors to flow from one artist's work to another.

The Fairies by Nguyen Gia Tri, a 10-panel lacquer painting, is the largest piece of artwork in the exhibition.

Another interesting artwork within the exhibition is Paysage, by local artist Georgette Chen, the only artist featured in both National Gallery Singapore and Centre Pompidou's collection.

We may not have profound knowledge or understanding in art, but the children took photos of the ones that they find more appealing.

Some artwork seems easier to relate while others look rather profound to me. Art have many facets and perspective depending on how you look at it.

Other artworks within Gallery 2

I like colours and this series of abstract artworks looks appealing to me from afar. :)

Gladys thought these are from the works of a child but they are actually from famous artists.

Our girl with her cheeky smile against the artworks.

We exit the exhibition, crossed the bridge linkway and it led us to the Chief Justice's Chambers and Office which are now available for public viewing. The last Chief Justice to occupy these rooms was CJ Yong Pung How.

Our next stop is Courtroom 1, one of the original four courtrooms that were built in the Supreme Court in 1939. This is the first time we stepped into a courtroom and it looked really grand to me. The judge sat in front, under the central proscenium, court officials sat below in front of the judge, witness and lawyers on the left, defendants in the dock and members of the public were seated at the mezzanine level. One of the staff shared with us that the defendants were brought up to the dock via a passage walkway beneath the dock that is linked to the holding cell.

We checked out the holding cells at the Supreme Court Wing at Level 1 where the accused were kept before being led to the courtroom. Each cell is equipped with only a toilet and a long concrete bench. The toilet flushes were located outside of the cells to prevent any harming incidents with the flush chains.

It was an eye opener for us and we wished we had more time to check out the corridor leading the accused to the courtroom and visit the other courtroom at Gallery 7.

We spent the final part of our evening checking out the delicacies at FOOD CO.LLAB and enjoy some live musical performance at the Padang Atrium.

There's definitely so much more at National Gallery Singapore that we were not able to cover within the short span of few hours. Hope to be back again soon, particularly to check out the Keppel Centre for Art Education which seems to be an interesting area for children to explore.